“One moment, if you please.  Filling the spaces behind the lathing in a brick house with some fireproof and non-conducting material is a concession to usual modes of building.  A more satisfactory construction still would be to build the wails of hollow bricks and with air spaces so disposed that neither wood furrings nor laths would be necessary.  There is, moreover, no good reason why the inner surfaces of the main walls of a brick house and both sides of the partitions should not form the final finish of the rooms.  Glazed bricks or tiles built into the walls, or secured to them after they are built, are vastly more satisfactory than a fragile and incongruous patchwork of wood, leather, metal, paper, paint and mortar, thrown together in some of the thousand and one fantastic fashions that spring up in a day, run their little course, and speedily return to the dust they have spent their short lives in collecting.  I am afraid to dwell on this theme lest I should lie awake all night in a fever of futile protest.”

“Pray don’t run any risks.  I move we now adjourn.”

“Yes; but first let me ask one question,” said Jill.  “Would not the difference of cost between a house built in the ordinary combustible style and the same made fire-proof, or even ‘slow-burning,’ pay the cost of insurance at the usual rates many times over and leave a large margin besides?”

“Undoubtedly it would.”

“Then, as an investment, what object is there in attempting to make buildings fireproof or even approximately so?”

“Excuse me.  I thought you were going to ask only one question.”

CHAPTER V.

WHEN THE FLOODS BEAT AND THE RAINS DESCEND.

After the architect had retired to his room it occurred to him that he might have answered Jill’s conundrum as to the profit of building fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night, in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to restore, and that protection against fire means also security against many other ills to which the dwellers in houses are liable, not to refer to the larger fact that there is no real wealth without permanence, while the destruction of anything useful in the world, wherever the loss may seem to fall, impoverishes the whole.  Having settled this point to his own satisfaction, he sought his pillow in a comfortable frame of mind.  Comfortable, but not wholly at rest, for no sooner did he close his eyes than the “fever of futile protest” asserted itself in turbulent visions of paper, paint and plastering.  Dados danced around in carnival dress; wall decorations went waltzing up and down, changing in shape, size